


there's my good old fashioned lover boy

by Granspn



Series: queen in 3d [8]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: more antics, shenanigans if you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 01:43:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17458223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn
Summary: so, good old fashioned lover boy may legitimately be my favorite queen song of all time, i literally can't listen to it without smiling like an idiot, so here's my tribute to this fucking banger





	there's my good old fashioned lover boy

“Good God! Can’t you two keep a straight face for _two seconds?_ You’re absolutely _ruining_ every take!” Freddie yelled into the recording booth. However, without his finger on the magic button, his criticisms fell on deaf ears, though it was unclear whether Roger and Brian would have heard him over their laughing fit anyway. 

“They can’t hear you,” Deaky said from behind his crossword puzzle. As his assistance wasn’t needed for the backing vocals he was lounging on the couch behind the control panel with a newspaper while Freddie directed his fellow vocalists left and right.

“I know,” Freddie said softly, falling into a seat next to John and giving Brian and Roger a moment to collect themselves. John knew that Freddie knew that the guys knew it was a good song. He also knew that Freddie knew they didn’t mean anything against him by their incessant goofing around. He also knew how hard it was to resist dancing along to Freddie’s strong rhythm piano and accompanying driving bass line, thank you very much. And the lyrics did lend themselves to quite a bit of theatrics, he thought, which was why he was burying himself presently in a Sunday crossword puzzle, to avoid becoming part of the problem. Still.

“It is a bit silly, isn’t it?” John reasoned aloud, tucking his pen behind his ear and meeting Freddie’s gaze. 

“Well of course it’s silly!” Freddie answered, popping back up and heading to the controls. This time he made sure he was going right into their bastard ears.

“Hey, boys,” he said coyly. Brian and Roger looked up and got ready for whatever barrage was coming their way.

“Terribly sorry, Freds, I just seem to have caught a fit of the giggles,” Roger said. 

“Enough of that. Just give me one good, clean, take. All right? Then you can take the piss all you like.”

“All right, got it, Freddie,” Brian said, literally having to grab Roger by the shoulders and face him toward the microphone. Freddie started the backing track and waited for the chorus to come around. One high and one low harmony were all it needed. And the middle eight, if they all survived that long. 

“ _Ooh, love. Ooh, lover boy.”_ A brief eyebrow quirk from Brian on “ _boy_ ” indicated trouble might be afoot, and things fell apart all over again when Roger made eye contact with Deaky behind the glass and immediately started batting his eyelashes and flipping his hair coquettishly. 

“ _Whatcha doin’ tonight? Hey, boy!”_ Brian broke down laughing when Deaky blew them a kiss and blamed him when Freddie started yelling at them again.

“It was Deaky, really!” Roger called into the microphone, “Tell him to shove his nose back in his newspaper.”

“Deaky, shove your nose back in your newspaper or I swear I’ll phone Ronnie and have her come and get you.” John just hummed a little laugh and sat back down on the couch, folding his legs beneath him and smiling to himself. They might have been the bitchiest band on earth, as Freddie liked to say, ("in the observable universe, I should think," Brian would add) but they were also, John figured, the cheekiest, and the flirtiest, always piled on top of each other in chairs and on couches, in each others laps and with their elbows resting casually on each others shoulders. Freddie blew kisses to the crowd all the time; it was only natural that some of them should ricochet back and hit his bandmates. Essentially forcing them to call each other _lover boy_ for the past hour was only adding fuel to the fire. 

“Sorry, Freds, I’m so sorry,” Brian was saying over and over again. “One more chance and I swear we’ll get it, honestly.”

“Brian? Shut up. Roger, stop flirting. Just record the fucking lyric. We’ve got to get to the middle eight, too, you know,” Freddie said, regretting it almost immediately.

“About that–“ Roger started, but Freddie didn’t let him finish.

“No, no! Forget I said that!”

“If you learned your passion at the good old fashioned school of lover boys, right?” Roger started.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Freddie interrupted, though his spreading grin said otherwise.

“Who exactly were you so impassioned with? I mean, it’s not as if they were bringing girls in, were they?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” 

“Shut up, Rog,” Brian said, elbowing him lightly in the side, “We get through this and we can go home. You can finish up some of that lover boy coursework you’ve been putting off. I’ve seen it piling up.”

“I heard that,” Freddie said, “All right,” he attempted to regain order, “Take eight.” 

The first verse came in. Quiet. John wasn’t sure about the mix but he figured he’d take it up with Freddie after, making a little note in the margin of his crossword to do so. Then the piano lead in. Then the first chorus.

“ _Ooh, love. Ooh, lover boy,_ ” they rang out in harmony with Freddie’s lead. So far so good. “ _Whatcha doin’ tonight? Hey boy!”_ Excellent! They’d finally made it through a take without breaking. John worried Freddie would cry from relief, but when he looked up at him he was rolling his eyes. In the booth, Roger was doubled over in silent laughter with Brian’s hand clamped over his mouth to keep him from ruining everything. Then a panicked look passed over Roger’s eyes when their next cue came up, and he pushed Brian away and leaned back in toward the mic.

“ _Faster, faster!”_ After that further success Brian shot Freddie an enthusiastic thumbs up through the glass, which he reluctantly returned. Just one thumb, though, compared to Brian’s two. So much for two-fingered Freddie Mercury, John thought, getting up to watch the antics over his shoulder. Brian and Roger bobbed their heads along to the rest of the next verse and by some miracle got through the next chorus fine as well. The music swelled a bit as they anticipated the bridge, finally adding the melodic counterpart to the lead.

_“I miss those long hot summer nights.”_ Looking up from the mic, Roger flashed a smile at Deaky, then pointed at him as he and Brian sang.

“ _Hey, boy, where’d you get it from? Hey b-_ HA HA! FUCK! _”_

“Brian!” Roger and Freddie called out in indignant unison, even though they couldn’t hear each other, which just made John break down laughing as well, literally slapping his knees in an apparent fit of unbridled joy.

“I don’t know _what_ on _earth_ you all think is so _funny_!” Freddie said to the studio at large, the corners of his mouth ticking up involuntarily as he looked pleadingly at Deaky. 

“Look, I know it’s old news to you, Freddie, that you learned your passion at the good old fashioned school of lover boys.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“But for some of us it’s a bit more of an adjustment!” Deaky said, his eyes crinkling as he spoke through his laughter. 

“Oh, fuck off!” Freddie said as he swatted at his shoulder, unable to suppress a grin any longer. 

“Oi! We can see you gossiping in there!” Roger called into the microphone.

“Anything you’d like to share with the class?” Brian said, wiping a tear from his eye.

“Absolutely not,” Freddie said. “Come on, let’s give it one last good go, all right? All right. Take nine.” 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you all so so much for the all the kudos and the amazing, encouraging comments on my last work!!! hope this one was fun, too! i've got a couple other short things lined up, but as always, lmk if there's anything specific you'd like to see!


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